


Six Hours

by softestpunk



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Declarations Of Love, M/M, Quarantine, what is the point of fic if not to torture Haytham Kenway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 16:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19834084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestpunk/pseuds/softestpunk
Summary: Shay is accidentally hit with a deadly pathogen intended for Haytham, and quarantined while tests are run. Haytham stays with him, knowing these may well be their last few hours together.And there's so much he's never said...





	Six Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Six Hours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21766222) by [Shoot1984](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoot1984/pseuds/Shoot1984)



> For Trope Bingo Round 13
> 
> Square: quarantine

**HOUR ONE**

“That was meant for you,” Shay spoke up as I finally shrugged my jacket off, accepting that the next six hours would pass more comfortably without it.

It _had_ been meant for me, which did nothing to soothe my guilt—one of many ugly feelings I was currently being forced to reckon with—over having allowed it to happen.

“Yes,” I said, meeting Shay’s eyes through the sheet of plate glass that separated us. The sterile, climate-controlled laboratory around us melted away for just a moment as I looked at him, current circumstances forgotten in favour of taking comfort in his familiar presence.

“Handy they got me instead, then,” Shay said cheerfully, rolling up his sleeve and taking the syringe he’d been passed through the double-sealed hatch.

I winced as the tip pierced his skin, though Shay himself did not so much as flinch.

**HOUR TWO**

“You planning on sitting there for the next four and a half hours?” Shay asked once the lab assistant had taken this hour’s blood sample.

“If you tire of my company I will of course wait elsewhere,” I said. “But this is not the sort of situation I can just walk away from.”

“You being here won’t change anything. I’ve either been infected or not.”

“Abandoning you will likewise change nothing. Besides, you owe me a report after this.”

“You were here the whole time!” Shay complained.

“Nevertheless,” I said. “You are forbidden from dying before that report is on my desk.”

**HOUR THREE**

“Never have I ever…” I paused to think of something else I hadn’t done that I thought Shay might have. Something I was willing to _admit_ to not having done. “Showered with my clothes on.”

Shay huffed, and I found myself grinning triumphantly as I put another point in my own column on the glass between us.

“Dare I ask for the circumstances?”

“You say that like it’s only happened once.” He chuckled. “You _would_ never have showered in a place where you didn’t want to be naked, wouldn’t you?”

“You say that like an insult, and yet I cannot think how it might be. I, Haytham Kenway, am more than happy to admit to a basic level of cleanliness that involves actually washing my skin.”

“Fine,” Shay said. “You wanna play dirty? We’ll play dirty.”

The way he looked at me made my stomach twist.

“Never have I ever had a threesome,” he said.

I held his gaze for a long moment, willing myself not to so much as twitch as I put a point in his column.

Shay’s eyes lit up. “Really?” he asked. “ _Really_?”

I looked away, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. “I didn’t think it was so terribly uncommon. You ought to try it some time.”

As soon as the words escaped me my stomach flipped over, a wave of nausea washing over me. Shay was very possibly not in a position to try it sometime. Shay was _very possibly_ spending his last few hours alive teasing me, and I was letting him, because that was his favourite pastime and I couldn’t bring myself to stop him now.

“Don’t know that I’d be able to convince two other people to come in here,” he said, voice gentle, as though it was _his_ job to comfort _me_.

“I’m sorry, Shay.”

“Don’t be,” he said, sitting on the workbench in the middle of the room, dangling his legs over the edge like an overgrown child. “Your turn.”

**HOUR FOUR**

“You keep wincing,” Shay said. “When I take the blood sample. Didn’t think you of all people’d be bothered by the sight of blood.”

“I’m not,” I responded, watching the lab assistant take the vial with the same utmost care as ever, handling it as though it was an unstable explosive.

 _I am bothered by the sight of_ your _blood_.

“Needles, then?” Shay prodded.

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t get very far in our line of work if sharp points and blood upset me, would I?”

Shay continued to look at me, waiting for an explanation.

“I am not fond of the reminder that I have failed you,” I admitted. What was the point in keeping things from him now? “It is my job to manage you effectively and not put you in the way of greater harm than you’re able to handle.”

“It was a setup,” Shay said. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I _should_ have known,” I responded, too sharp.

Shay did not react. He knew my anger wasn’t directed at him, but at myself.

“Haytham,” he said softly, pressing his hand flat to the glass in front of me. “It’s all right. Rather me than you. You’ll be all right without me.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hear _you_ _’ll_ as Abstergo, or as a reference to myself.

I wasn’t sure either would be all right without him.

Instead of arguing, I pressed my hand to my own side of the glass, lining it up with his and trying to let his comforting smile reach my heart.

**HOUR FIVE**

“Probably didn’t breathe enough of it in,” Shay said at the report that his latest blood sample had come back negative. He was an awful liar, and this situation had not improved his abilities at all.

But if it was what he needed to tell himself, then I would not contradict him. Not when…

Not now.

“Probably not,” I agreed.

“Liar,” Shay said, casually, as though he wasn’t predicting his own painful, horrific death.

“You aren’t dead yet,” I reasoned. He _could_ have been. Sometimes the incubation period was as little as two hours, a terrifyingly quick disease that could have devastated whole cities. Whole countries. _The world_.

Which was why it had been locked up here.

And why I was stuck on the other side of a two-inch thick pane of glass, looking at a man who I had touched for the last time. There would not even be a body to bury. It would have to be incinerated.

I would never be closer than two inches from him again, and there were so many things…

So many things I had never said. That I could not say now, because I wouldn’t risk making his last hours miserable.

Five hours and forty-five minutes was the longest incubation period ever recorded.

Five had passed.

Shay coughed, and my blood turned to ice.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Air’s just dry.”

**HOUR SIX**

“There’s a stray who comes by every evening for a saucer of milk,” Shay explained. “Little silver tabby. If you see her, I’d like it if you took her to a shelter. No-kill. She’s a sweet girl, I wouldn’t like to think of her all on her own.”

I nodded dutifully, heart twisting in my chest.

The last blood sample had gone. In just a few minutes it would come back, and Shay…

Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes before he began to feel the strain. Chills, muscle cramps, a blistering headache behind his eyes that no painkiller would help him with.

Twenty or thirty at the outside before the virus killed him outright as he cried tears of blood and spent his last moments in agony with no one or nothing to comfort him.

“And then there’s the chain-of-hearts hanging beside the shower,” he said. “It deserves a good home. Happy in any bathroom with a window, really. African violets on the kitchen windowsill. They like a cup of tea as much as you do, so that’s your inheritance from me.”

I bristled at the thought.

I did not _want_ an inheritance from Shay. I wanted him to live.

“Shay—”

“And then there’s the little ornamental lemon on the balcony. I think Gist might like that, you ought to pass it on to him. I know it’s not procedure, but they’re only plants. No secrets hidden in them, promise.”

“ _Shay_ —”

“Think that’s it. Oh, umm. Blades are yours, give them to whoever you see fit. Not Charles, I’ll come back and fucking haunt ye for that.”

“Will you _stop_?” I snapped, rising from my place on the floor where I’d been leaning against the glass opposite him. “Stop it. Your affairs will be settled with the utmost respect, I promise you. I will see to it personally. But I cannot bear to hear this any longer.”

I should not have raised my voice.

Shay may only have had _minutes_ to live, and I was shouting at him. I’d never shouted at him before in the entire time we’d known each other.

As always, he only looked at me with the same trust and loyalty in his eyes, eyes in which I could do no wrong.

“I don’t regret this,” Shay said. “Haytham, _listen_ to me. I’m glad it was me.”

“I am _not_ ,” I shouted again, hating myself for it. My heartbeat pounded in my ears at the thought that my last conversation with Shay would be an argument, that the last words I ever said to him would be in anger, and yet I couldn’t _stop_.

“I love you,” I added, voice breaking. “I love you and I am about to watch you die and I do not care about the arrangements for your _house plants_.”

Shay’s face softened.

A sudden, sharp pain in my chest made me wonder if I would simply drop dead of a broken heart once he was gone. I had existed so long without him, but I hadn’t _lived_ until Shay Cormac had been dropped practically into my lap and become the brightest, most wonderful thing in my world.

How could I continue in a world without him?

“Haytham,” Shay began, hand against the glass again.

A siren and the unmistakable sound of the electronic door to the quarantine room opening stopped him in his tracks.

“All clear, Mr. Cormac,” a voice informed him from the speakers embedded in the ceiling. “You’re free to go.”

Free to go.

 _All clear_.

Shay was—

I’d barely started the thought before I was being pinned to the glass that had separated us a moment ago, Shay’s body trapping me there, warm, soft, _alive_ lips sealing over my own, a low moan rumbling in one or both of our chests, my knees weak with relief.

It took a moment to realise Shay was kissing me.

Kissing me.

Not awkwardly telling me that he could never return my feelings, not begging me not to speak of it again.

Oh, and he kissed with his whole body, just as I had so often imagined, one hand curled around my neck and the other splayed on my chest. Over my heart, which he must have been able to feel thundering beneath my ribcage.

“Think it’s about time we got out of here?” Shay asked, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Yes,” I licked my lips, catching the taste of him on them. “Yes, time to get out of here.”

Tomorrow, there would be an investigation to begin and punishment to exact.

But today, there was Shay.


End file.
